Chapter 2

Chell stared at Wheatley's mangled, blacked shell. His optic was smashed and it looked like his faceplate had been the first part of him that rammed into the tree, as it was flattened and crushed into his body. His lower handle was hanging on by a few fraying wires and the upper handle was missing entirely.

Chell reached out her shotgun and gently nudged him, not sure whether she really wanted a response or not. He'd betrayed her, trapped her, insulted her- though they were pretty pathetic insults- and then tried to kill her when she wasn't any use to him anymore. Why was she still standing there?

She turned to leave when the speaker sticking out of his shell sparked, spluttered and began to make a quiet buzzing sound, like a dying bee. Then, through a cloud of static, sounding faint and glitchy, she hear him.

"Sssscchhhtttt... llo? Any-any-anyon... ssscchhh... little hel-help? You're quite hones-nestly my lastttbbzzzzztttttt."

His voice faded out, the speaker gave a last fitful burst of static and then everything went silent.

Chell blinked, startled. He'd sounded scared out of his wits. She reached out and patted his dented shell then, shouldering her shotgun, scooped him up. She didn't know what she was going to do with a dead core, but it felt wrong to just leave him there.

Halfway back through the forest she noticed a quiet humming coming from inside his core. Feeling a small glimmer of hope form and trying her hardest to squash it at the same time, she flipped him over in her arms. Chell peered through a crack in his shell and spotted a small box with a series of blacked out lights on it. Right at the bottom a small yellow light flashed rapidly. His processor was still working.

Chell was running before she ever registered what it meant.

Chell's front door slammed open and she flew in, cradling Wheatley in her arms with the shotgun tossed over her shoulder. She threw it on the sofa then placed the broken core on her desk and began to pace, thinking.

The yellow light on his processor clearly meant that some part of him, no matter how small that part was, was alive. He wasn't gone yet. Chell turned him over again, looking for anything that might be of any help. The front of his core was pretty much useless so she turned her attention to the back. His back port, the one he used to activate controls back There, was the only thing that seemed to be in one piece.

Suddenly, Chell had an idea. She ran to her supply cupboard, wrenched open the door again and took out a small box. She opened it, pulling out a lead with a USB stick at one end and a simple three pin connector on the other. She tried the connector against Wheatley's back port, flashing a small smile of satisfaction when it slid in with a click. Plugging the other end into her laptop, she sat down and lifted the lid.

She was greeted by a quiet bleep and a pop up window.

'New Handware Detected.'

'Transfer files of program Aperture Science ID Sphere to main hard drive?

Chell clicked Ok and watched as the loading bar on the screen began to fill.

Wheatley had had a pretty rough day.

He'd actually lost count of how long he'd been stuck in space, watching the stars, half listening to Space Cores demented gibberish, which got less like gibberish and more like long periods of static in his head as the months rolled by and regretting his last moments on earth. Quite a lot actually.

The last thing he saw before he was sucked into the soundless, airless void was the lady. Sometimes he was sure that the whole 'letting him go' thing was an accident, that he'd been knocked out of her hands by Her claw. But other times he thought he might have seen a glimmer of satisfaction in her eyes, that she was happy to see him fly off like that, like she had let him go willingly.

This had literally drove him half insane, to the point where sometimes he didn't know how he'd gotten into space. Had he been built here? Was the Space Core a friend someone had made him for company? Wasn't he supposed to be somewhere else?

But those times were few and far between and eventually he would snap out of peaceful ignorance and start thinking about the lady again. It was an endless circle.

Or it was until he got a massive meteor to the side of the faceplate.

His optic got a fabulous new crack in it and it was bye moon, bye Space Core, bye endless boredom and regret and hello earth at a couple thousand miles per hour.

By the time he became a large fireball, had broken the sound barrier and done a high-speed face plant into a tree had he finally been able to think through the haze of panic and perform an internal analysis. He then realise he was pretty much done for.

Battery power at 10% and dropping. Backup power disabled. Optic shattered, giving and receiving no information. Auditory sensors on their way out. The only plus was his artificial nervous system was almost completely shot so couldn't feel much pain. He could barely feel the dirt he was lying in.

The only company he had was the red flashing words in his head. Battery power at 9%.

The words were at 4% when he felt a faint nudge, heard a small tap of metal on metal.

He took a deep, shuddery metal breath and decided to test his vocal processor.

"Sssscchhhtttt... llo? Any-any-anyon... ssscchhh... little hel-help? You're quite hones-nestly my lastttbbzzzzztttttt."

He tried again but all that came out was a burst of static. After that he gave up. His last conscious thought was he hoped that whatever found him did something useful with him.

AN: Hi again. Thanks for reading. I'm quite surprised at how many people actually favourited and followed! And Thanks for the reviews. I've posted this at 3am so if there's any mistakes just let me know and I'll sort it. See you again soon!

EDIT: And here the edit to this chapter 2!